Saturday, October 27, 2012

Sandy's Sand and Wind

The wind peaked on Thursday night. We had to hold the rails to stay upright in during the fierce winds and moisture worked its way through a few of the newer "hurricane proof" windows. Sometime during the wee hours, the winds stopped, then reversed to a more westerly blow with equal ferocity.

We walked the beach the next morning. There were a few dead fish, but most disturbingly, were the plastics. Bottle and drink tops littered the beach, not in thousands or even hundreds of thousands, but in the millions, giving me a feeling of hopeless anger. What's worse, the seas had been so high that the coastal vegetation had acted as a catch for all of the plastics in the surf, blown in from the southern Atlantic, like baleen straining out krill as the sea retreated. I had seen pollution similar to it on the island of Bonaire's windward side (called "plastic beach") where years of large and small plastics had washed ashore and fully concealed the actual sand on the beach. It was surreal and horrifying, and that didn't even account for the unseen micro-plastics.

Cuban coffee in Coral Gables after the storm. A large cup of hot milk to which you add the desired coffee (in the silver). They make it from finely ground Arabica beans and add more sugar than is advisable. You could say that I was alert for the next several hours.

I taught junior to make a coconut candle.

Below, the beach was reduced to a fraction of its original size. Several large sections of Bahamian cactus washed ashore as well, but plastics were the sickening majority.

A stairway to the beach was buried in several feet of sand. The small white table top to its right is a standing desk where staff hand out towels to beach goers. It was under several feet of sand and awash with sea. Some areas were completely covered in sand from three to six feet deep.

The construction at home has been completed, so we head northward to Boston today to face Sandy for second half of her tour. Hopefully, she'll spin out before causing too much harm. The skies are cloudless but very windy today and the large Atlantic swells are still rolling into southern Florida. I am a storm magnet, Dave T.

3 comments:

I guess that people always threw trash in the ocean, but it seemed nicer when it was returned as jewels of sea-glass, with an occasional doubloon from a sunken Spanish galleon thrown in.--Road to Parnassus

Keep your head up and your head down. Sounds like it's going to blast in just south of you, but I'm sure you'll get a good dose in Boston as well. This is one of those times where I'm not so sad about being landlocked.

Not trying to be premature, but I think your done (as of the 30th and as long as you don't go out seeking the blasted things) with the storm attraction that seems to have dogged you this season. Glad you and your family faired well.